MI5 and CIA ‘hacked TVs and used them as bugs’

The documents – said to have come from the CIA’s Centre for Cyber Intelligence – allegedly show that a CIA branch worked with MI5 on a project to “infest smart TVs, transforming them into covert microphones”.

The so-called “weeping angel” programme would trick users into thinking their TV was off when it was actually on, it is claimed.

WikiLeaks says the documents show smart TVs were then used as a bug “recording conversations in the room and sending them over the internet to a covert CIA server”.

WikiLeaks described the development as an “emblematic realisation” of George Orwell’s 1984 – a novel which imagines how TV screens could be used to monitor the every move of citizens.

It is claimed a different CIA unit produced malware to “infest, control and exfiltrate” data from iPhones and iPads, while a similar team is said to target Google’s Android operating system – allowing agents to “bypass” the encryption of messaging apps like Signal, WhatsApp, and Telegram.

He said: “Comparisons can be drawn between the uncontrolled proliferation of such ‘weapons’, which results from the inability to contain them combined with their high market value, and the global arms trade.”

WikiLeaks and its allies have embarrassed Washington before.

Previous releases of classified material have included hundreds of thousands of documents from the Pentagon and the State Department.